CIA recruitment comes under fire; students protest MIT interviewing

A group of MIT students demonstrated Wednesday to protest the
presence of recruiters from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which
conducted employment interviews on campus that day.

The protest had two major goals, according to Adam Grossman '87, one of
the protestors.

"One is to show the MIT community, especially the administration, that a
large portion of the community is opposed to the idea of allowing this
group of criminals to recruit on campus," he explained. "The second is to
educate the people about the CIA."

The demonstrations, partly organized by the student Committee on Central
America, started in the morning outside the Office of Career Services (OCS)
in Building 12, according to James Olivieri, chief of Campus Police.

Approximately 10 of the protesters entered OCS around 9:30 chanting
slogans and carrying placards, said Robert K. Weatherall, director of OCS.

The demonstrators disrupted the office, so "we asked them to leave, and
they did," Olivieri explained.

"It was orderly and they made their point," he continued. "There were no
problems."

"We didn't let it disrupt the interviewing," Weatherall commented. About
a dozen MIT students interviewed with the CIA, Weatherall said.

MIT's policy since 1969 has been to allow all organizations that are
genuine employers to recruit on campus, according to Weatherall. This
policy allows all governmental organizations to conduct interviews here.

"Students have every right to protest, but they can't disrupt our service
to the students that do want to talk to the CIA," Weatherall explained.

Some of the protesters entered lecture classes in the morning dressed in
military attire and announced their oppostition to on-campus CIA
recruitment, according to demonstrator Jonathan Feldman G.

The protest moved to Lobby 7 at noon when it included approximately 60
participants, according to Gretchen Ritter G, one of the speakers at the
rally.

After a series of demonstrators delivered speeches in Lobby 7, the
protest returned to the outside of OCS.

The purpose of the speeches was to call attention to CIA violations of
international law as well as international human rights, according to
Feldman.

An anti-CIA flier passed out from a Lobby 10 booth earlier in the week
cites examples of alleged CIA activities which include the overthrow of
governments in Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, and the mining of
Nicaraguan harbors last year.

"The CIA is antithetical to the goals that we try to promote at MIT and
in this country," Grossman explained. "Some of those goals are human
rights, democracy, respect for democratically-elected governments, rights
to privacy, and rights to free expression."

"The CIA has had people on its payroll that were on death squads,"
Feldman indicated.

"I was pleased with the kind of participation and solidarity that we had
today," Ritter said. "The fact that we reached many people made it a
success,"Feldman agreed.

Louis Menand III, senior lecturer in the department of Politi[mk1]cal
Science and special assistant to the Provost, agreed that the CIA "has been
involved in activities that run absolutely contrary to the spirit of
American ideals."

He qualified this, adding, "I do not know for a fact that the CIA has
indeed violated international law."

The Nicaraguan minings are presently the subject of an International
Court of Justice case, Menand said. Until a verdict is reached in the case,
we know only that the CIA has been engaging in activities that appear to
violate international norms, he explained.

Over 200 members of the MIT community signed a petition expressing
opposition to CIA recruitment before Tuesday, Ritter said. Ritter delivered
the petition to President Paul E. Gray '54 on Tuesday and spoke with Gray
over the CIA issue.

"It was important to tell him that a lot of students were opposed to the
CIA recruiting on-campus," Ritter explained. "I was disappointed that we
didn't make progress towards a commonality."

Feldman contended that MIT should establish a policy of prohibiting
governmental agencies which are "besmirched in illegality and immorality"
from recruiting on the campus.

"By allowing recruitment, the Institute is extending its resources to the
CIA," he said.

Policy offers students a choice

Weatherall said that the decision to interview with the CIA should be
made by the individual student and not by the Institute.

Many MIT students do not agree with the protesters, Weatherall continued.
The CIA's activities repel some students, while others believe that the
CIA's covert activities are necessary for preserving national security, he
said.

Very few people who work for the CIA are actually involved in covert
activities, Weatherall added. Most are involved in information-collecting
technology and information analysis, he noted.

The protesters asserted that even those CIA employees who do not engage
in covert activities are reponsible for the actions of the agency.

"I think that people who work for the CIA who are not directly engaged in
terrorist or anti-human rights activities are collecting information about
groups that may be used later," Grossman said. "They're not killing anyone
with a computer, but the information they collect may be used towards
terrorist activities."

Feldman compared such employees with German Nazi officers who did not
actually commit atrocities during World War II but were still a part of the
bureaucracy that directed the Nazi government.

"It takes a lot of resources to carry out the CIA's activities," Feldman
observed. Those employees who work in non-covert areas are needed to
support those who participate in the CIA's secret operations," he
explained.

Weatherall emphasized that "the decision not to work for an organization
because some part of the organization does something unethical or illegal
is a decision that every student must make."

MIT policy on military recruitment

Weatherall said that the issue of military/intelligence recruiting
was first raised in 1968 when Dow Chemical Co., the manufacturer of napalm
used in Vietnam, came to MIT to conduct interviews. A committee was
appointed to determine what kinds of organizations should be permitted to
recruit on campus.

The committee decided to continue with the policy of providing "interview
opportunities impartially to all bona fide employers -- industrial,
academic, and government."

In 1978, a committee was appointed by then-President Jerome B. Wiesner to
look into the relationship of MIT to US intelligence agencies. This
committee reexamined some of the issues concerning CIA recruitment,
according to Menand, a member of the committee.

"We don't feel that intelligence agencies should be treated any
differently than other organizations in their open recruiting efforts," the
committee re-affirmed in a 1979 report.

Protester Nancy Otis G contended that the OCS already does place
restrictions on what groups may interview on campus. Neither employment
agencies nor organizations that charge potential employees a fee before
hiring them are allowed to recruit on campus, she asserted.

Weatherall explained that employment agencies are not considered to be
genuine employers and are thus not permitted to interview at MIT.

"We felt that employment agencies come in between students and the
eventual employers," Weatherall explained. "It's beneficial to students and
to MIT if we have the direct contact with companies."